


La douleur est la beauté

by bhaer



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo, Toddlers and Tiaras - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bad Jokes, Gen, Just so you know what you're getting into, The Learning Channel, To be clear this is a Toddlers and Tiaras and Les Miserables crossover, Toddlers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-24
Updated: 2014-02-24
Packaged: 2018-01-13 15:17:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1231252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bhaer/pseuds/bhaer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marianne Enjolras is the biggest name in child pageants. Grantaire's in it for the go-go juice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	La douleur est la beauté

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sath/gifts).



Richmond, Virginia

June 5th, 2014

 

“Mrs. Enjolras, can you tell us about your daughter?” A light flashes  and the camera pans to a blonde woman with electric mauve lipstick. Somewhere in the convention center, a baby screams. Vaguely perturbed by the disruption, Cassie-Anne assumes an expression of the utmost simpering femininity.

“My Mary is a little firecracker,” she drawls in a heavy Southern accent. “We come from a looong line of bea-uuuty queens.” She stretches out the word _beauty_ , lips puckering into a smirk. Behind the camera, a producer gives her a thumbs up.

“And of course Mary takes after her momma and grandmom. She’s been competing since she was seven days old and now, six and half years later, hasn’t lost a pageant in well, now…” She ticks off her fingers. “Nearly a year.  _I_  think her record speaks for itself.”

“What would you say is Mary’s greatest strength?” The producer asks. Cassie-Anne places her perfectly manicured hands over her mouth while she considers.

“She’s a ruthless competitor, my baby. You hear of other lil’ girls who have to be forced to practice their routines. Not my Mary. Works all day and night and I gotta drag her to eat or sleep. And, I mean, just look at her.” She fumbles in her jean jacket for a pack of cigarettes. “She’s got the look.”

The producer nods at the director, an overweight man with an impressive white beard. “And the competition? Little Miss Paris promises to bring girls from all over the region. Mary’ll be up against some very talented little stars. Renae Courfeyrac, for one. She’s coming from a victory in Dallas. And Antonia Gros, who won Miss Alabama in 1999—”

He’s cut off by the sharp arch of Cassie-Anne’s dark eyebrows. “I know who she is,” she says icily.

“Yes, well she’s Nicole Grantaire’s coach,” the producer mutters. He looks wounded.

“I’ve never heard of this _Nicole_. I know Antonia though, and she ain’t won a pageant since she got that pill addiction in Malibu. As for _Renae_....” Cassie-Anne lets out a high-pitched laugh that almost hurts the ears. Ignoring the rather large No Smoking sign and the literal hundred small children wandering around the lobby, she lights a cigarette and exhales in a smooth line of smoke. “Renae ain’t no competition for my baby. You’ll see.”

There’s a stony silence and the director motions for a cut.

 

Fantine loves children. It’s the defining love of her life, even more so now that her dickbag of boyfriend has run off to “find himself” in Malaysia. Fuck him, she thinks as she pulls her hair back into a ponytail. She loves her job more than she ever loved that sonofabitch.

Her newest client, a little girl with a face like a porcelain doll, eyes her suspiciously and Fantine thinks that out of all the adorable brats she’s sent to manage into television stardom, this one has the sweetest blue eyes in existence. Fantine tells her this.

“I know,” the little girl says passively. Used to unstopped narcissism, Fantine presses on. “My name is Fantine, what’s yours?”

“Marianne Enjolras. Are you my handler?”

“I’m here to make sure this whole process isn’t scary for you. Are you excited to be on TV?”

Marianne shrugs and tugs at a golden ringlet. “I’m excited to win. I wanna go to Paris.”

The director taps Fantine on the shoulder.“Mary, love, we’re going to put a microphone on you so we can ask you some questions on camera,” he explains slowly.

“My name isn’t Mary. It’s Marianne Enjolras,” Marianne hisses as her hair is combed to the side so the microphone wire can be snaked through the inside of her pink jumpsuit. A little scared of the fervor in her voice, Fantine raises her hands in surrender. “Marianne. Got it.”

 

“My favor-ite thing about pageants,” Nicole finally pronounces after a several-minute sequence of _um_ ’s, “is my go-go juice.”

One of the photography interns giggles into his coffee cup and is promptly shushed.

 

The only time the camera team can interview Renae Courfeyrac is during her pre-pageant spa appointment. Lounging on the massage table in a leopard print bathrobe, Renae surveys them suspiciously. Her long brown hair is in curlers and her caramel skin is covered in a green moisturizer mask; the effect is uncanny. She looks nauseatingly mature, even as her stuffed pug rests beside her.

Renae’s mother is a vaguely overweight woman in a blue cocktail dress that feels inappropriate for the situation. She hovers in a corner, taking up a rather large portion of the frame.

“Momma says if I win this pageant, I gonna get another crown,” Renae says with a sharp look at Momma, who nods uncertainly.

“Do you think you’re going to win?” The producer asks. It is evidently the wrong question; Renae bolts up like a miniature panther.

“Of course I’m gonna win! I can get a crown! I can get a puppy!” There’s some nervous laughter in the room. Assuaged only for a moment, Renae flops onto her back and lets out a shriek, little hands reaching to her face.

“Get this off me! I’m done. No more for me,” she mutters as the spa worker runs the sink. Her mother finds the episode funny and stands in front of the camera while the facial is washed off. “Renae does what Renae wants.”

 

Little Miss Paris, director Gina Lamarque says, is going to be one of the most competitive pageants in the country. Over seventy-five girls, from drooling infants to high schoolers with shiny new breast implants, all fighting for various small divisional titles (“Miss Ultimate-Super-Queen-of-France”), a few cash prizes, two plane tickets, and more importantly, the prestige of rubbing their win in everyone else’s face. The appeal is strong and Lamarque is confident the convention center will fill.

The judges range from vaguely confused local business owner Jean Valjean, who tells the camera crew that he thinks little girls are all very nice, to twenty-nine year old (and therefore nearly decrepit)  pageant maven Irma Boissey. They compare serious looking stacks of notes just out of frame while ten year old Helen Combeferre is interviewed.

“I mean, a scholarship is a scholarship. Right?”

Fantine smiles sympathetically at the (rather plain) newbie and offers her some apple juice.

**Author's Note:**

> So, like, all the actual funny bits (fingers crossed that there _are_ funny bits) come from the actual TLC show. Do not mistake these shenanigans for fantasy. If you regularly watch Toddlers and Tiaras and this therefore means something to you: Enjolras is loosely based off of Eden, but Courfeyrac is _all_ Mackenzie. 
> 
> Moms are variations of Sath and Bro's dads. Moms are just like dads but women and also they drink more chocotinis.


End file.
